"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).

Saturday, July 16, 2011

Our Freedom for a Little Bread We Sell

Matthew Arnold (1822-1888), Worldly Place:

Even in a palace, life may be led well!So spoke the imperial sage, purest of men, Marcus Aurelius. But the stifling den Of common life, where, crowded up pell-mell, Our freedom for a little bread we sell, And drudge under some foolish master's ken, Who rates us if we peer outside our pen Matched with a palace, is not this a hell? Even in a palace! On his truth sincere Who spake these words, no shadow ever came; And when my ill-school'd spirit is aflame Some nobler, ampler stage of life to win, I'll stop and say: 'There were no succour here! The aids to noble life are all within.'